Who else gets the catch?

Quota shares give their owners confidence that no other commercial fisher is going to catch 'their" share of the fish.

However, theft is a concern. In some inshore fisheries, people catch fish and sell it illegally in New Zealand and overseas. Once stolen, this fish is not there for legitimate commercial or non-commercial fishers to catch. This is a particular problem in high value fisheries like rock lobster and paua.

The Ministry of Fisheries is working with quota owners and others to reduce fish theft.

Another issue is that, in some important inshore fisheries, there are simply not enough fish for everybody.

Where this happens, the government must decide how the fish should be shared between the commercial and non-commercial sectors.

The next step in management

The government is working on management plans for a number of New Zealand fisheries. These "fisheries plans" will help the different sectors get the most from their fisheries.

For the commercial sector, this may mean things that make harvesting or managing the fishery more efficient. Or it might mean things that improve the value of their quota.

Species	*Weight (000 tonnes)	*Value ($NZ millions)
Squid	70.9	168
Hoki	42.8	152
Rock Lobster	2.4	114
Orange Roughy	5.0	70
Paua	0.7	51
Ling	8.1	47
Hake	5.8	32
Jack Mackerel	30.3	31
Snapper	4.1	26
Warehou (all)	8.2	23

New Zealand Fishing Exports 2005 (top 10 species)

*2005 provisonal figures

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Updated : 16 November 2007

A seafood icon

New Zealand's "Bluff" oyster has been fished commercially in Foveaux Strait for well over a hundred years.

In the mid-1980s, we began to tackle the issue of Bonamia. This parasite was killing oysters, and caused the fishery to close midway through the 1986 fishing season.

Fishing began again the next year, but the oyster beds most affected by Bonamia stayed closed, in case fishing worsened the problem.

However, they found Bonamia spread anyway.

Next, they tried to limit the spread of infection by selectively dredging the central part of Foveaux Strait. This too failed, and the infection continued to spread. By 1993, the fishery was closed completely for three years.

The infection ran its course, and Bonamia disappeared for the rest of the 1990s, but reappeared as a new outbreak in 2000.

Managing Bonamia will be a great step forward for this fishery. So too will figuring out how to get more small oysters surviving through to market size. And also, we need to better understand the environmental impact of using dredges in Foveaux Strait.

Towards this, the Ministry of Fisheries is bringing everyone together to help develop a fisheries plan for the Foveaux Strait oyster fishery. The plan's development involves commercial, recreational and customary fishing representatives, scientists who have worked for years on oysters, environmental groups, fishery officers, and managers.

With everyone working together like this, we think that real improvements are possible.